Sunday, October 14, 2018

With over 40 million players worldwide, Blizzard's RPG first-shooter game Overwatch remains an international smash-hit even 2 years after its release. One of most favourite game characters is Mei, the adorkable Chinese climatologist with (literally!) very cool abilities.

Shanghai-based voice actor Elise Zhang, is as adorable as her alter ego. She is here in Red Dot Island as a guest at South-East Asia's premiere gaming convention, Gamestart Asia 2018.

At the interview session with a small group of eager press folks, the perky voice actor would twirl her long hair, and she would make animated hand expressions as she spoke about Mei, her involvement with Overwatch and the ardent fanbase. Her positive energy was infectious. It was like seeing Mei alive in 3D, but without the Endothermic Blaster, of course.

Red Dot Diva: How did you start working on voice acting, and how did you get the role of Mei in Overwatch?Elise:I studied chemical technology in college and I got my Masters degree in that. I didn't learn how to act or voice act. I was obsessed about voice acting since I was 12 or 13 years old, so when I was in college, I searched for some training courses on that. I took the course and my mentor thought I had some potential and gave me a lot of opportunities. So, after I got my Masters degree in chemical technology, I became a voice actor.For Overwatch, that's all about audition. My company works with Blizzard a lot - World of Warcraft and Heart of Stone and Heroes of Storm - and I've been in all of those games. So, they said to me - we need a voice actor who can speak English and Mandarin, and you have a Masters degree, you must know how to speak English, so come to the audition. There were 5 or 6 girls at the audition, and I got the part! I am so lucky, because Blizzard made a character just like. If they made a different kind of girl character, I might not have gotten it.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Last week's Japan Park SG exhibition was quite the cultural fest on all things Japanese. In particular, Red Dot Diva thought the events held on the Omakaze Stage was very engaging.

The schedule of stage events ran the gamut of talks with cosplayers, wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger, robotist Professor Tomotaka Takahashi, various types of traditional dances, a party with girl band Poppin'Party as well as veteran rockers Sunplaza Nakano Kun & Papala Kawai. However, Red Dot Diva's favourite performance on stage was the live drawing of samurai sumi-e art (Japanese black ink brush painting) by OKAZU, a talented artist who hails from Osaka.

OKAZU is well-known for his sumi-e art on historical samurai and warriors, but he also does fantastic artwork of characters from manga, anime, Western pop-culture, and even comic book superheroes!

On stage during the Japan Park SG show, in less than 30 minutes, OKAZU created striking warring samurai images that seem almost alive, as if they are to jump through the white canvases. Accompanied by a cinematic soundtrack, his live performances were both elegant and visually powerful.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Even though his moments as Darth Maul were quite short in "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace", a heavily made-up Ray Park owned and stole those scenes with his graceful, acrobatic wuxia-style stunt moves wielding the Sith Lord's iconic double-blade lightsaber. And with those few minutes, he earned himself gazillions of fans across the globe.

He has since acted in "X-Men", two G.I. Jones movies, in TV series "Heroes" amongst many other productions.

Red Dot Diva has a huge huge crush on Ray Park ever since she saw him in Episode I, and she was over the moon when she found out that he will be attending Star Wars Celebration Europe, held in London last year. Of course she had to get the photo and autoraph ops with Ray!

The actor is super-friendly to his hoard of fans, and he interacts with the RP Fandom regularly on Twitter and Instagram.